Monday, April 12, 2010

Death! / The Last Man! / Escape!

Today THOIA serves you three times the terror, all from the Sept. '54 issue of Uncanny Tales #24. First, Myron Fass brews up an unexpected visit from "Death!" himself, followed by Ed Moline's superbly spooky "The Last Man!", and finally rounding out our traumatic triple beheader with "Escape!" possibly illustrated by Sid Greene (so sayeth Ger), it's a fast paced thriller which proves not every story about a man escaping from prison by hiding in a coffin will end in a premature burial... well, sort of.

It sure feels like "the Last Man" is missing a page. I was expecting a revelation about the wine in the cask, that it was actually a cask of blood. And what's the real story behind the deaths of the club members? Do they all come back as vampires?

Ahhh, the happy ending... not something you see around here at THOIA alot (actually, it's kind of intentional.)

>i liked all three stories. more of these if u will.

No problem Carl, there's always lots of Atlas pre-code simmering on the burner for future posts... just keep checking in!

>feels like "the Last Man" is missing a page.

Some of the shorter economy Atlas tales have this effect on me as well, I occasionally wish some of these stories were fleshed out a bit more too... though also the Atlas strong point was the ability to cram in more quality stories per issue than pretty much any other horror mag published at the time. It's not a consistant record by any means, but Atlas definitely led the pack.

>My favorite bit was how in the first story Death shows up wearing his summer dress

You do love a pretty summer dress now don'tcha Vicar? Yes, I guess we all do.

Thanks for the comments, and please keep 'em coming. I also just noticed we're creeping up on the big 500 mark of THOIA Followers! I'm blown away by this and thank each and every one of you. Who'll be lucky #500?

I know I'm just a superstitious peasant girl, brought up on primitive fears and all, but even I know that crazy old witch needs to shuffle her playing cards. Everything she turns up is a damn spade: three, two, one.

Thanks again for the comments... we've got a tale of torture from Harvey's Black Cat Mystery lined up next, and something extra too. It's an article submission written by a THOIA reader about the ACMP. Not familiar with this? Well come back tomorrow then and find out!

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